A few more pictures on Tonle Sap Lake just resized from my archive. We were told by the tour guide that most that stay here are Vietnamese. It is interesting to see that most house do have a dog or two with them and I doubt that they eat dog here.

On the 3rd day of our tour in Cambodia, we visited the Tonle Sap Lake, the Great Cambodia Lake that has a large flood plain. During the wet raining season, the river flood the lake and increase its size by ten folds, making it one of the largest lake in South East Asia.

About 6000 people stay at Tonle Sap (according to our tour guide) and mostly Vietnamese. No power supply and all depend on generator and battery to power the basic electrical appliance such TV. Life seem to tough on this flood plain and the lake but I guess they are happy and live a simple life. In the floating village, there are floating basket ball court, church, police station and more. The road leading to the Tonle Sap was bumpy as no proper road was built due to the fact that the whole area will be flooded yearly. Most houses there are simple floating house which are ready to be moved from time to time depending on the water flooding condition.

However, it is sad to see that a small number of people at Tonle Sap teach their young children to beg from tourist. Not a pretty sight but should change in time to come.

After visiting Angkor Thom in the morning, we headed back to Siem Reap town which is about 10 minutes away for lunch. We refresh ourselves in the hotel before head to Angkor Wat in the afternoon. The Angkor Wat, the world largest temple, is classified currently as one of the seven wonders of the world. As I have visited Grand Canyon twice, the Great Wall of China and the Niagara Fall once, Angkor Wat is the fourth Wonder of the World that I have visited.

By the way, we used mostly US currency for all purposes and occasionally received some local currency as change. Hence there is no need to change to any local currency if you do not wish to as US Dollars is welcome most tourist places in Cambodia.

The Angkor Wat now still have 5 towers standing tall. Seven of the twelve has collapse previously. The entrance fee to Angkor Wat is $20 for foreigner for one day pass and free for local Cambodian.

The Temple is simply magnificent. The delicate stone carving on the wall as well as many stone carving on Apsara simply took our breadth away. We spent about 4 fours in Angkor Wat climbing to the 3rd level and took many pictures with the setting sun.

We left Angkor Wat at seven and head back to the town for dinner.

Some of pictures taken are as below:-

Spending about 3 hours at Angkor Thom, we had a chance to enjoy the beauty of the structure of Angkor Thom. More pictures taken are as below:-

On the 2nd day in Siem Reap, we visited Angkor Thom, the great capital city of Khmer Empire. Our tour guide has decided to let us visit the Angkor Thom in the morning for a simple reason that he want to reserve the afternoon hour for the visit to Angkor Wat. According to him, Angkor looks more beautiful with the setting sun.

We spend the whole morning at Angkor Thom and took quite a lot of pictures.

Shortly after we touched down at Siem Reap Airport, we head for lunch and soon after, we visited a handicraft factory where you can see skilled worker working on wood and stone carving.

After the visit to the factory, we proceeded to downtown and visited a local market and did some light shopping for handicraft and painting.

Along the street of Siem Reap, there are quite a number of stores and restaurants operate by Chinese. More pictures to come 🙂

We were at Cambodia to visit Angkor Wat early June with Michael and Rocky. We flown that via Air Asia from LCCT which took about over 2 hours to Siem Reap, a small airport that serve as gateway to Angkor Wat. Our first day at Siem Reap was relax and we visited a few local stores. The highlight of the day was the dinner at a local restaurant that feature cultural show, especially the Apsara Dancer of Cambodia. Some of the pictures taken with the Canon 30D we as below:-

More pictures will be posted

Our recent stop at Singapore Airport for transit we had a chance again to view the Magical Face Change performance in conjuction with the CNY celebration. The Magical Face Change performance used the pulling mask routine which is fast and accurate.

The Pulling Mask routine is the most complicated. Masks are painted on pieces of damask, well cut, hung with a silk thread, and the lightly pasted to the face one by one. The silk thread is fastened in an inconspicuous part of the costume. With a flick of his cloak the performer magically whisks away the masks one by one as the drama develops.

It is April again and we were back to Penang for Qing Ming . This time around we took the opportuinity to drop by Leong San Tong, Khoo Kongsi with Doreen. The Clan House, the Leong San Tong was built in 1851 is a magnificient structure worth visiting. Khoo Kongsi practise the allocation of scholarship to clan children and during the our student days, we were here several times to collect our scholarship. It has been several years since our last visit and as a Khoo Clanman, all we need is to collect the entrance pass upon arrival before we proceed to visit the main building. We were there for about an hour and took sometime to shoot some pictures.

Some additional pictures taken on Tigers using Canon 30D with high speed continuous shots.